Chronic Symptoms
by Tebbers
Summary: Barely a year after New York, Alex and Dana are still searching for answers. Answers come to them, in the form of strangers with viruses needing cures, but viruses aren't so easy to contain, and a new outbreak raises even more questions. T for violence.


a/n Yet another supposedly quick one based on conversation from AI. This is what went with Dana and the infection. I'll assume that she finally woke up. Can't say I've delved into that vein of thought. It'll probably be something I'll come back to. This here is mainly Prototype (Activision/Radical), with a touch of Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft) and undertones of Left 4 Dead (Valve). It's all connected, don't you see? But not enough to be a crossover all three ways.

There may be some moments of question marks. These might be cleared up by the story Feathers, though it's not necessary for you to go chase it down and read it first. You can read it after though. I'd like that. Or before. Whenever. I'm not picky. Actual logistics of story timelines in the end note.

Chronic Symptoms

Dana halted in putting on her shoes when she saw Alex emerge from the small office off the living room. "Hey, Alex. Where are you off to today?"

"Heading off cabin fever." He said as he moved toward the door. He paused, a hand on the knob. "You need anything?"

She went back to tying her right shoe. "Need you to take up photography or something."

"What?" He cocked his head to one side, wondering where that suggestion came from.

"What? You get some good altitude. Google maps would love you." She said, pointing up and out the window. Granted, Fairfield only had a few decently tall buildings to scale for a better vantage point. She'd seen what Alex could do. How he could run right up the side of a building as if gravity didn't apply to him, then vault right over the top edge to gain another four or five stories of height. The thought of him using such amazing abilities for something so simple as cartography and photography was strangely practical for her.

He stared at her a moment, trying to decide whether or not she was serious. He was leaning toward both answers, and entertained the idea as a source of income. It wouldn't be difficult since he'd consumed a few photographers back in New York. Two from the news, who'd desperately hoped that their pictures would survive as proof of what had really happened. He'd unloaded the film out of their cameras on both occasions, only keeping them on his person long enough to tuck them out of the way in an apartment once he'd gotten shaken off a helicopter and crashed in through the large picture windows of someone's apartment. Pushing that thought aside, he finally noticed that Dana was preparing to leave as well. "Where are you going? I thought you were off today."

"I am. I'm meeting with a friend for lunch." She pushed herself to her feet.

"Someone else from school?" He asked, finally letting go of the door and turning fully to face her. Her connections from school were impressive. From the safe house in New York to this apartment in rural Pennsylvania. The guy that owned this place, Luke Rodriguez, was still there with them though, and while he was friendly enough with Dana, he was quiet and withdrawn for the most part, and had bowed out for a family vacation up in New York just yesterday.

"Yeah." She pulled on a dark jacket and pulled the hood up.

He chose not to call her out on stealing his sweatshirt. "Somebody who pokes around where they shouldn't?" He asked, knowing that she was searching just as much for the truth of the virus and Gentek as he was. His only problem with her helping was that she couldn't defend herself from whatever attention her search would stir up like he could.

"You know it. Do I hang out with anyone else?" She said with a grin.

"No. When did you start looking for so much trouble?" He asked with a sigh. Few memories from the real Alex Mercer had returned in their entirety, but he'd eaten enough big brothers to cement the urge to protect his adopted body's little sister. At times, he wondered if he didn't remember anything of sibling interaction because there was nothing to remember from Alex. That realization was a bit saddening, but he was able to isolate himself from it by separating his own persona from that of the human Alex Mercer. That man had died, leaving his body, his face, his identity for the Blacklight virus to take up and use, even if those that knew the details of this never called him Alex. To them, he was Zeus. To Dana, he was still Alex, even if he acted funny, as she put it.

"Sometime after you left home." She said with the same smirk. He frowned, feeling guilty on Alex's behalf for the way she made it sound like abandonment.

"You want me to come too?" He pulled the door open for her.

"Nah. We'll be boring." She said with a laugh. She stepped out into the hall, glancing quickly over her shoulder at him. "I gotta go. I'll be late." With that, she started off quickly down the short hall to the three flights of stairs leading down. Alex stared after her, not liking the feel of her parting attitude. That last laugh had been forced, and her movements had gotten a little jerky. She was nervous, but why? Was she trying to keep him away from whomever she was meeting? He remembered the sting of betrayal he'd suffered at the hands of Karen, his supposed former love interest, though hers was just another face he didn't remember. She'd come closer than anyone to rendering him defenseless. He turned the thought aside, capsizing it into the sea of other memories. Dana wouldn't do that. She was just meeting an old friend from college. She needed some time to rest her mind. The long months since they'd left New York hadn't been spent idly. It might even be coming up on a year. Maybe. He'd found a few more leads and Dana was expert at locating them and trailing recent activities. Turns out that their host was even familiar with digital security, and had gotten into quite a variety of locales that they'd only found inaccessible firewalls. Not surprising considering that he seemed to be a work from home code monkey.

Alex shook his head to clear the thoughts, trying to silence the cacophony of voices and memories and school his mind blank. He followed Dana only so far as the stairs. Instead, he went up to the roof, shoving the door open and wrenching the anchor for the padlock out of the steel frame. Fairfield didn't have a particularly interesting skyline, but he preferred the roof over walking the streets. The breeze and the relative quiet helped him clear his head. Nevermind the stirring irritation he had for people at times, which generally reared its head in crowds, like streets.

- - - - -

Three months earlier, half a world away, another virus found a foothold. Three men fell, succumbing to the sedatives mixed in with the virus in the smoke grenades bare moments after they crashed through the window. Hours later, when the heat of the day was ebbing to evening, one roused. He scrubbed at his face to try to wake up more fully. His head was still swimming, making walking a very unappealing option, so he crawled to his fallen comrades. They were still asleep. One roused with a sharp call of his name and a good shake. The other was breathing, but didn't respond.

"What the he'll was that?" The second man asked as he tried to wrap his mind around consciousness again.

"Looks like they found out about us." The first man said, checking their communication hardware. Nothing had been tampered with, so the attack had only been on them. But why just drug them, unless sedatives weren't the only thing in those smoke grenades.

"Why not just kill us?" The second man said, finding his feet and swaying as decent balance eluded him.

The first man frowned, his fears voiced aloud and solidifying in the air. "Bet we just joined the testing ranks."

"Shit, man. Are you serious?" The second man balked, remembering the trucks that had transported convicts from the Polish prison nearby, and the bodies that had been removed from the small concrete bunker hardly days later. "So do you have any theories about the drugs they're testing?"

"Probably some germ warfare." The first man said, focusing his hazy mind to compose a message for help, hoping it wouldn't be the last he sent.

"Germs? What makes you think that?" The second man asked as he headed down the short hall of the apartment, leaning heavily against the wall for support.

"Why else would they take me straight from Gentek after the thing in New York and put me out in the middle of nowhere to watch some brains poke and play with genomes? No. This is more viral shit and if it's anything like New York, we don't have much time."

Their third comrade in the floor started to cough, but didn't wake.

- - - - -

Ten minutes later, and another half the world away, the message arrived. A woman ran her hands over her face, back over her head and gave two of her four red braids a hard tug. She leaned back in the chair, staring at the message on the screen.

'We're compromised. They know we're watching, and they're using us to test. They're testing on convicts. Looks like 100% mortality rate, unless they're using bullets for treatment. First load of bodies left yesterday, so we didn't get a chance to check. Today we get loaded smoke grenades. Not feeling right. Only time.

Where are they getting their strains? Is it New York or is it new?

Observations attached. Waiting for orders.'

The message didn't look any more promising after a few minutes. She couldn't have guessed this would happen. Poland was supposed to be a scouting mission, but here they were infected with God knew what. There were a few equally possible paths that could come from this. One led straight to Mercer, who'd no doubt found out her involvement in Gentek, and would be less than likely to cooperate. She could probably use their one ex-Blackwatch agent. They'd gotten him into the unit, and staged his death to get him out of it, so he had some serious debts to pay, even if his loyalty and sanity was questionable.

There was a slim chance that their pharmaceutical boy might be able to pull some sense out of the virus. This seemed a bit more plausible, but she needed some samples of the virus first. The closest team she had was in Italy, and dug in pretty deep, so it was likely a good fallback spot. She reviewed their standing orders and recent communications. It seemed to be quiet in their area, then again, so did the Poland team, and then this. She shoved the guilt aside and started up some orders. If the targets in Poland were working on the virus from New York, then they didn't have much time. Alex Mercer had done a bang up job enhancing the virus there. At first, she'd patted herself on the back for getting him onto the project. Now she wasn't so sure. It seemed that having him in Gentek wasn't solely her own idea. She still had pulled the strings, but she hadn't been able to figure out just what ends someone else was using her means for. After sending out orders to Italy, she sent reassurances to the Poland team and advised them to do whatever they could to hold it off.

It took a week and a half for the extraction, and the Italy team didn't have much optimism. Before they made it back to base, they'd already had to put all three of the other team in stasis.

The stasis generators they used were a bit of technology kept secret and close. Yet another gift from the pieces of Eden. Ancient technology that gave up hints and instructions to drive humanity forward with older knowledge. The stasis generators had been indispensible. They slowed the body's metabolism, equally slowing the effects of drugs and disease and prolonging life in terminal cases. The only downfall to them was that they also slowed reactions and movements, so they made sloths look like speed demons, and one had to be brought up out of stasis to be any kind of useful.

The prognosis was grim. The virus seemed to affect them similarly to rabies, but they hadn't responded to any typical treatment. The samples were en route already, and arrived the next day. They were separated into five sets from each of the three infected. She sent one set of samples to her researchers. Some in research universities. One in pharmaceutical research. Two in CEDA. The weeks stretched before the dismal response arrived. No idea how to cure it from anyone. The only reassurance from CEDA was that it was an airborne pathogen that needed higher concentrations to spread than the human body could withstand, so this infection should end with these men. The best suggestions for treatment of the team included prayer and bullets.

With the last response, she could only put her head in her hands and try to imagine how many ways things could go wrong with Alex Mercer getting involved. Things were already in motion to recruit him. The Blackwatch agent was reluctant, but cooperative. He was another wild card in this scenario.

- - - - -

Back in the present, Alex watched Dana's retreating form as she turned the corner three blocks down and resisted the urge to follow her. Something didn't feel right today, and he hoped it was just the absence of their gracious and silent host.

As Dana turned the corner, she could feel the ebbing of the pressure on her mind. Alex wasn't watching anymore. She shuddered, not liking the idea of lying to him in the least, and was pretty sure that he knew of her deceit. The only reassurance for her lying was in the fact that his negotiations would be a little messy if he'd come along, and they'd likely have no more information than when they started. The man she was to meet had information from before Alex's hire at Gentek, and apparently little loyalty to the company. She wasn't surprised. What little she'd managed to dig up and get Alex to divulge from his interrogations had pieced together a rather twisted and corrupt company stretching back years and years. She couldn't fathom where it had started, and what common and low tech roots it might've had in the yester years.

Reaching beneath her borrowed coat, she found the small handgun that Luke had insisted she keep on her person whenever she left the apartment. He'd even had a small woman's holster for better concealment. If she hadn't known him in college, she would've thought it a little unnerving how prepared he was. Almost as if he expected to have an endangered female in his care, such as it was. Their contact had rekindled while she was in New York. He'd dropped her a line to let her know that her searches were messy, and he'd tracked her before kindly covering her tracks. After the initial quarantine was lifted, he'd invited them up to Fairfield, where he promised boredom, peace and quiet. Alex had been agreeable enough to it, trusting Dana's old connections to not lead them foul. Nevermind that Alex didn't have much of an option, and no real allies anymore. What a horrible position to be in. Enough freak show skills to take on the army, everyone else's faces to hide behind, but nobody to call an ally. Nobody but her. Dana had done enough research into Ragland's notes to see what had happened to Alex. She knew her brother was dead, and felt guilty for feeling a little more affection and loyalty to the somewhat naïve and only human shaped virus that had replaced him. It was as if what she called her brother now was what she'd wished he'd been all along. Their childhoods weren't troubled. Empty, perhaps. Their parents were hard working individuals, striving to carve out an existence and doing quite well at it, though they seemed to overlook the children they'd brought upon the world. Alex seemed fine with that. He was smart, and had left for college quite early, paying his own way through scholarships and grants. Dana had taken a little longer to blossom, and only left to wander for a short time before working her way through school, never hearing a word of encouragement or even contact from anyone in her family. Somehow, it was okay. Now, she had something like a big brother watching out for her, almost to the point of annoyance. Dana checked the rooftops, looking to see if Alex had followed anyway.

She thought she caught a flicker of movement, but it might've been the sun in her eyes. The morning was wearing on, and the sun was clearing the buildings. She dropped her eyes to street level again. There was the diner where she was supposed to meet her latest contact. Just ahead on the corner, and as she opened the door to go inside, she heard a digitized voice singing an upbeat little tune on the jukebox. She looked around, seeing only three other patrons. Two men in denim vests sitting at the bar, and they didn't turn to face her. The third was at a table just to the right of the jukebox. He watched her enter, keen hazel eyes recognizing her immediately. He was wearing a black hooded, sleeveless shirt, not heavy enough to be a jacket, over a long sleeved gray shirt. He leaned back from the newspaper spread out on the table in front of him and waved her over. She approached, seeing him a little more clearly. He was of middle-eastern descent, with tan skin and strong angles to his face. A faint scar slashed up above his right lip, trailing a few centimeters into nothingness on his cheek. His gaze felt calculating, as if he were measuring her up based on her body language and maybe even thoughts. It was like the pressure she felt beneath Alex's watchful gaze.

"Your brother didn't come?" He asked casually. That was to the point. Despite his tone, he came across as a strictly business individual. He folded up the paper and set it aside on the table.

She sat down. "No. Luke told me not to bring him."

"Luke would." He said, his face twisting thoughtful a moment.

"He's always been like that." She said, offering the same explanation she offered Alex.

"I know. We've talked." The man folded his arms and propped his elbows on the table, leaning in toward her as he spoke.

"He didn't tell me your name." She said, folding her arms as well, but not leaning in.

The man didn't answer right away, only narrowed his eyes for a brief moment before breaking into a broad and somewhat intimidating smile. "Keith, and don't worry. We can talk here."

- - - - -

Two months earlier, Ray Rodriguez slipped back into the lab on his way out of the building, planning to put a few things away he'd forgotten. His blood ran cold when he saw that he wasn't going to be the only one in the lab. It froze completely when he saw what they had. Unlabeled samples that weren't authorized to be in the building. He was supposed to be identifying them, but this girl was poking around at them, and her gaze jerked up when the door banged closed behind him. She looked at him for a moment over the three rows of tables and through one set of shelves. Her blank look of surprise melted into a smile immediately. "Hey, Ray, what's going on?"

He thought quick, calling on his intentional habit of leaving things about. The excuse of hunting a lost mug, binder or car keys was a legitimate reason for being in many places he shouldn't. The best way to manage it was to usually 'lose' said objects on the mail cart after chatting with the cute girl in the mailroom. "Lost my Netflix. I was going to return it on the way home."

"Watching movies on your break?" The woman said in a playful tone.

"Actually, yeah. Finishing up the season." He said, moving over to the in and out boxes to rifle through the incoming mail and interoffice communications.

"I think I saw it in your door hanger." She offered helpfully.

"What a place for it to be." He laughed, moving toward the door. She was lying. He hadn't even brought any Netflix to plant around for this ploy.

"It's got your address on it. We all keep up with your stuff for you." She said, still not moving from the collection of samples and testing instruments.

"Thanks, I'll check there." He stopped at the door and turned with a flourish and a bow. "I take my leave of you, my Lady Guinevere." With that, he slipped out the door. Leaving Gwen to work on the samples he'd left. He'd only had them two days, and here he'd lost control of them. They didn't even have viral samples in this department. How was he going to cover this up? He racked his brain. Gwen was already running some tests on them, and seemed a little upset to see him there. That didn't set right.

He got home a couple hours later, finding an email from the human resources department at work.

'Mr. Rodriguez,

You seem to have misplaced some documents in Lab 3. Please pick them up all or in part by the end of the week. It is very important that we adhere to confidentiality standards as set forth by Abstergo.

Regards,

Mrs. Ellen Stater'

Ellen had bailed him out quite a few times. She was the mother hen of HR, and took care to smooth out any differences among the employees in the Buffalo research office. They'd never spoken directly about being affiliated outside of work, but he was sure that she was of the same allegiance to distant guidance, and was now dropping him a hint. He needed to get part of those samples and get them out of the office. He was sure that Gwen had probably mentioned her find to someone, and the inquiry would be starting up soon, if it hadn't already. There wouldn't be much of an opening, and he had to be careful not to blow his cover.

- - - - -

Back in the diner, Dana flipped through a few folders of correspondence before even looking twice at the computer. She was already putting things together. Scholarships. Specifically targeted philanthropy. Exchanges of persuasion about hiring Alex. Money changing hands. Somebody had wanted Alex on staff at Gentek well before he even thought about going back to school, and the information made her question the grants she'd been able to win for her own schooling. She looked over her papers again, seeing that her lunch partner had already finished his sandwich and was reading the newspaper again. The broadsheet covered him, and it was then that she noticed the anomaly of his left hand. He was missing his ring finger. "Keith." She hissed quietly, though it was pointless. The rough talking men at the counter had left, and they were now alone in the front area of the diner. He flipped one corner of the paper down to cast a dispassionate, hazel glance her way. She took the motion to be the collection of his attention and continued. "Where did you get all this? You worked at Gentek?"

He shook his head before flipping the paper back up to finish whatever article he was reading. "No."

Dana stared at the paper for a moment, then turned to the computer, reading through emails and status reports and other sorts of sensitive information on research at Gentek. This was delicate information, and her suspicions took a new, unsettling direction. "You.. still work at Gentek?"

"Heck no!" He laughed. A happy but still unsettling sound. He folded the paper and set it aside again, the traces of the smile and his laugh fading. "I had a guy that worked there."

"Had?" Dana picked up on the past tense of his statement, as well as the sobering of his tone with the statement.

"Had." He repeated. "Gentek was a little hesitant to let him go, and tracked him a lot further than I thought they could. We're working on that now."

"So who are you?" She folded her arms, worried that this man was apparently masterminding some plan against Gentek, or maybe with Gentek. Either way he'd been manipulating the boons and failures of Alex's life. She frowned. Engineered Alex's death. The thought was bitter, but she didn't feel the cry of revenge that should've accompanied that realization.

"Keith." He said simply, not offering a further explanation.

"Who are you?" She asked again, her tone a little flatter. Harder.

"I'm just an errand boy. A blade in the crowd. Sometimes I get to maestro things, but not very often." He said with a slight turn of a smile.

"You're part of something bigger." Dana observed.

"And you have a skill for logic." He countered.

He seemed to be getting at something. "You aren't just here to give me information." She said with a jerk of her head.

"This information was paid for with blood. Did you think it would be free?" Keith said, his tone suddenly sharp as the blade he'd claimed to be just seconds ago. It softened quickly as he continued. "We need you. Your eyes. Your logic."

His statement assured her that she wouldn't be paying more blood for the information. "What could you possibly need from me?"

"You put that all together in less than three hours." He said as he checked the clock on the wall. "Out of letters and tax statements. You're sharp. That's what we need. A mind like yours. We've got a few leads we're working on now, but just can't piece it together."

"You put this all together to make it happen. What could anybody else possibly come up with that would be any more corrupt and convoluted than Gentek?" She snapped, irritated that he was talking like she'd already agreed. Suddenly the bulk of the small gun at the small of her back seemed a lot larger. The door banged open, drawing their attention a moment. A man in a blue t-shirt stumbled in toward the counter and paused there, resting a moment and looking paler with the passing seconds. Someone came out from the kitchen. Dana's attention came back around when Keith spoke again.

His gaze was shrewd, almost smiling. "You'd be surprised. I know I was." His tone had gone cold again. He leaned forward on his elbows, closing the space between them over the small table. "We can't have you dying here. You're coming with me."

- - - - -

Only a week earlier, Luke made his usual lunch run, offering to pick up something for Alex, who declined as always. This day was different. As he made his way to his usual booth at the Burger Tank, he saw that it was occupied. He was about to reroute, but then recognized the top of a tattoo peeking out the top of the low t-shirt collar. A mimosa flower. He sat down anyway. "Hey, Ray. You're in my spot."

"And you're predictable." Ray shot back with a grin very similar to Luke's. The family resemblance was strong between the brothers. They had the same rounded jaw lines and deep-set eyes. Born here in Fairfield. Mercy hospital, in fact. They had gone off different directions for school, but Luke returned while Ray got a job in Buffalo. He visited occasionally, sometimes with news a little too sensitive to send through his own channels of communication.

"You usually warn me. What's up?" Luke said, the smile sliding off his face while he started on his fries.

"Nothing really. Just wanted to surprise you this time. Saw some crazy spy movie where the whole germ warfare blew up in their face. Student film, you know. They don't always let the good guys win."

"Sounds like a dumb movie. Why do you watch that crap?"

"A guy I work with knows the guy who made it, and another friend over the internet told me to look into it."

"And you came up to tell me about it? Got a copy if it's worth sharing?" Luke propped his elbows on the table, more or less following the unfortunate chain of events. Somebody caught an engineered bug, Ray couldn't figure it out and Luke was supposed to get it to someone who could, but who? Luke didn't know anyone that might be even remotely useful. Someone thought he did, because Ray slid a DVD case across the table.

"Yeah, you should do a home screening and see what you think, maybe have a few guests over or something."

"Huh." He scratched his head. "What makes you think either of them could help?" He was pretty sure Ray was referencing his current guests, Dana and her too serious brother.

"Remember the thing with New York?" Ray smirked over his milkshake before popping the lid off of it so he could steal fries and dip in the chocolate swirl.

"Yeah." He went ahead and pushed the fries closer to his brother.

"The guy you know made the bug."

"No shit?" Luke rocked back in his chair. To watch Dana and her brother interact, he wouldn't guess the guy capable of building a birdhouse, much less that virus that had wiped out most of Manhattan almost a year ago now. Then again, maybe the outbreak in New York had all been a fluke. Part of him hoped not, because they apparently needed Alex to do something about this current germ situation.

"No shit." Ray said, leaning forward. "But I don't want you dealing with him about it. There's a guy coming in town to do it. He dealt with New York, so he knows what to do."

"So why am I getting into it?" Luke folded his arms, leaning in again now that the initial shock had worn off.

"Because I can't get this to him, and I lost your apartment keys." Ray said, reaching over to steal a drink of Luke's soda.

"Oh." Luke grunted. So Ray had the virus, Luke had the guy to cure it, and someone else hired the negotiator. That didn't sound like such a bad proposition. "So I'm really not into it, am I?"

"Nah. Guy already knows what to do. You just need to get him that DVD and some house keys for the screening." Ray tapped the case on the table as he spoke. "Wanna go up to Mohonk or something?"

Luke shrugged. This was one of the more carefully laid out plans. He generally had been overlooked in anything that seemed to matter by his reckoning. Now was his time to shine, even as a delivery boy. "Sure, why not. All I need to do is take these to the guy and." He paused. "Give him house keys?"

Ray's turn to shrug. "Apparently the guy is going to meet Alex at your place."

"Wait. This guy is ex Blackwatch, and Blackwatch was supposed to deal with the infection Alex started? Is Dana going to be okay?"

Ray shook his head. "Dana won't be there. Neither will you. That's what they told me to tell you. There's another guy in town for Dana in case things get ugly."

Luke balked. "Get ugly. How ugly?"

"Well, the virus in New York was perfectly contained before the outbreak." Ray said somewhat bitterly. He'd had quite a few friends in New York at the time. Hadn't heard from any of them since.

"Are you saying there's going to be another outbreak?" Luke gasped, his voice coming in a rushed whisper.

Ray shrugged. "I hope not, but they told me to get the hell away in case there was. I'm just glad they're doing damage control. They've also got a target pinned in case it does. This is already registered through Abstergo as a leak from some research team in Europe somewhere. How it got here, nobody really knows, but that's where the strain can be traced to. Keeps me from sticking my neck out." He patted the DVD case as he said it.

"Are you sure?" Luke asked, a little apprehensive at the magnitude of the failure that was possible with the smallest misstep.

"Yeah, they've got me covered." He leaned back. "You too. The guy is gong to be at the corner of fifteenth and Pacific at five. You need to be there at a quarter to."

"That'll be easy. There's some new displays going up in the galleries up that way." Luke said, nodding and finishing the burger. "How will I know him?"

Ray shook his head. "You won't. He'll be looking for you."

"Awesome. I guess we'll head out tomorrow?"

Ray nodded. "That should get us out from under the shit storm before it breaks."

- - - - -

After about an hour of fresh air, Alex was pretty sure he'd reined in his cabin fever. Dana hadn't come back, or at least not down the same way she'd gone. Looked like she was going to make this a long lunch. That was fine. He'd give her a few more hours before he went looking for her.

He returned to the quiet of the apartment, finding the door unlocked and wondering if he'd even locked it. His answer was inside. A man turned to face Alex as he pulled the door closed. He had close-cropped brown hair, shrewd green eyes, and some sort of armor beneath the casual jeans and t-shirt he wore, though the vest he wore over top worked to hide some of the contours. Alex noted the hostility in the man's look, but tried to play it diplomatic since this wasn't his home. "Hey. Looking for Luke?"

The man shook his head. "Nope." There was no further offer of explanation, and he made no move other than to turn to fully face Alex.

Memories bubbled up. Images. Faces. This man. Alex had never met him, but more than a few of the people he'd consumed had. He scrutinized the memories, finding their owners and realizing that each one of them had been Blackwatch. The man in the memories cane out a little more clearly. More than just a face. A uniform. He was Blackwatch as well. His name was Allen Highcar. Alex narrowed his eyes into a glare. "You Blackwatch flunkies not through following me yet?"

The man laughed aloud, though it wasn't humor or arrogance there. There was fear, mania, madness. "I'm not with Blackwatch anymore, Mercer."

"Then why are you here, Highcar?" Alex said the name pointedly, hoping his apparent knowledge of the man's identity would prove even more unsettling. It seemed to work. The smile left the man's eyes. Alex folded his arms, no less irritated at the man's presence.

"A virus." Highcar finally answered. "Somebody needs you to come up with a cure."

"Uh-huh." He grunted, unconvinced. "And how am I supposed to do that?"

Highcar shrugged. "I'm just delivering."

"Blackwatch can clean up its own messes." Alex grumbled, stepping clear of the door. "Get out."

"I told you, I'm not Blackwatch anymore." Highcar ground out through his teeth.

"Then who?" Alex finally took his word with the healthy dose of irritation that had accompanied it.

"I don't know!" Highcar said, waving an arm as if it would disperse his mounting frustration. He opened his mouth to speak again, but a series of beeps cut him off. Instead, he fished a small phone from his pocket, read the message, paled and put it back. He looked at Alex again and licked his suddenly dry lips. "I just know it's somebody with money. A lot of it. Plenty for you too, if you'll help." His tone had softened considerably and even taken a note of pleading.

Alex folded his arms, not believing the schizophrenic presentation of the request. His mind swirled, seeking an explanation somewhere in his collective of memories. There was nothing until a clear image seared across his mind. Incendiary rounds. Hunters. Fire. Panic and scattering Blackwatch troops as another hunter exploded from an improvised bomb skewered into its side. Three more explosions and an assessment of losses. One of the burned corpses, or part of it at least was wearing the tags bearing the name Highcar. Alex blinked the image clear. The former Blackwatch was staring at him, clearly unharmed in what was a ruse of death last year.

"Look, you and your sister won't have to run anymore." Highcar said in a jittery tone still tinged with pleading.

Alex straightened, not liking this new method of persuasion, but not seeing the threat in the statement. He opted not to answer, since his silence seemed to be working on Highcar's resolve anyway.

Highcar's mood shifted again, pushed to aggression by Alex's unyielding scowl. "Or whatever the hell you want to do. I got out. Got paid. Don't care." He made a motion as if flinging his intentions aside. "I'm done." He moved toward the door while still trying to skirt around Alex at a generous distance. Alex stepped further away from the door, and Highcar wrenched the door open before sneering at Alex. "Hope your sister has enough sense to pick up on a deal of a lifetime."

The soft hiss of shifting flesh barely led the echoing thud of the door as it slammed shut, and Highcar found himself staring at a long and disproportionate black-clawed hand. This same hand shifted again, snapping around him and hauling him off the ground and toward Alex. He fumbled with the armor beneath his t-shirt before meeting Alex's stony façade with terrified eyes.

"Wrong thing to say." Alex said in a low tone. His hand shifted, covering his panicking prey quickly and converting biomass for his own use. He didn't miss the soft sound of four mechanical clicks, but by then, Highcar's memories were already integrating with the chaos of thoughts and minds in Alex's head.

The faked death a year ago and the small fringe group that had facilitated the charade. No one Alex knew. No organization he was familiar with. Other memories showed that this same group had gotten him into Blackwatch in the first place. To what end? Highcar hadn't been told.

This particular job. No faces. Only digital and paper correspondence with no return addresses and computer generated points of origin, rerouted and echoed through the digital world. The only direct bit of communication had been that last text message. 'Do not. Do Not. DO NOT. DO NOT KEEP THE SAMPLE ON YOU!!' But he had, and the concern was high in Highcar's last few thoughts. He'd had the viral samples in his pocket, and they'd been little more than a faint tingling on the edge of Alex's mind as the virus interacted with Blacklight. He didn't have time to turn that thought. Three of the grenades finally timed out and exploded, tearing through his body and filling the apartment with bloodtox gas. It wasn't fatal, but neither was it by any means comfortable. He smashed the door to the apartment clear across the hall in his haste to clear the smoke from the cramped apartment. Coughing, he staggered out as a slight breeze cleared the hall. Faint calls echoed from all around. He didn't answer. He was preoccupied with the traces of the virus still moving through his body. It was similar to rabies. Some of the strains anyway. Others had merged with Blacklight into something more contagious. Airborne. Faster acting. Dread filled him. In the explosion, there was no doubt that biomass and all variations of the virus were broken off and scattered. His eyes shifted, and the wafting traces of infection on the air appeared, faintly luminescent. He also saw people through the haze. The luminescence spread across their bodies, highlighting their shape and marking their movements. They were already infected. He set his jaw. He had to stop this infection before it spread. How many people were in this building? He wasn't sure. Didn't care as he shifted both arms into blades and launched himself down the hall toward the first person.

- - - - -

"You're kidding." Dana said. "After what you guys did to Alex, why would I help you?" Finally some resentment at her brother's demise had reared its head, and she was a little relieved for it.

"Look." Keith said, jerking his head toward the only other patron in the diner.

She turned to look. The ill looking man had been helped to a chair. A man in a gray shirt and stained kitchen apron was heading outside. Bare seconds later, he bolted back inside, his face bloodied and his assailant right behind him. Another equally ill looking man crashed through the door. A commotion picked up in the kitchen. Dana turned back to Keith. "What is this?" She hissed, starting to rise to interfere.

"Another outbreak." Keith said, placing a hand on her arm to halt her. The first ill man had his head in his hands, completely oblivious to the brawl starting up with the kitchen staff's attempts to subdue the second man.

"You don't mean Alex..." Dana started, turning away from the brawl to fit Keith with shocked eyes.

Keith shook his head and stood. "Not on purpose this time. Come on. We've got to get out of here." He moved around the table, snagging the hood of her jacket and tugging. "Give me your coat."

"What?" She asked, standing up as he pulled her chair back from the table. "I can't just..." She started, her voice rising even as her protest faltered. What had quieted her was the fact that the first man was now looking at her, a thin trail of blood snaking down his cheek from his eye to drip onto his blue shirt. His face was pained, but that only barely veiled his growing irritation.

"Yes, you can." Keith hissed, tugging her coat back and down off her shoulders. The ill looking man in blue had risen from his chair, his eyes still fixed on them. "Out the side door. Go!" Keith ordered, completely relieving Dana of the gray hooded sweatshirt and giving her a shove away from the growing altercation. Two men from the kitchen finally wrestled the second man to the floor between them. The first man screamed and leapt clear over the tangle of bodies. Keith whipped the jacket around like a matador and when the man got close enough, he snapped it over the man's head before wrapping his right arm around him and tossing him over his hip to the floor. Dana yelled at the sudden movement of aggression against her would be ally, but he didn't seem to hear. Instead, he vaulted over the unmoving body of the first man and into the fray with the other men.

The kitchen staff staggered back after he approached, sinking to the floor with growing patterns of red spreading across their shirts. She saw Keith turn his attention to the still yelling man in the floor. With a flick of his hand, she saw a blade snap out from his wrist. It was already bloody, and with a bolt of horror, she realized that she was witnessing mass murder. She backed to the door, ready to flee toward the sounds of the approaching sirens. Keith put the blade in the man's face just as a gunshot rang out. Keith spun from the impact, keeping his legs under him and staggering toward Dana. She saw his quick sidelong glance and followed it. There was a waitress in the back with a pistol still trained on him. Two more shots rang out, but he arched his body sharply to one side, apparently dodging at least one. The other tore through his right forearm with a weak spray of blood. Using the momentum from the dodge, he swiveled completely around snapping his apparently wounded arm out and putting one of the diner's own butter knives in the wall just centimeters from the waitress's shoulder. The woman balked, and dove back into the kitchen.

Ignoring his bleeding, Keith grabbed the computer and files from the table, the bag that had contained them and met Dana where she still hesitated at the door. "Come on. We've got to get out of here before the EMTs get here." He said, his voice still as casual as it had been while they were sitting at the table.

Her mind struggled to make sense of the last five minutes. This man wasn't just an information source. He was part of the schemes of which there were apparently more than just that of Gentek. Judging by the speed with which he'd dispatched two supposedly infected men, two perfectly healthy men and stopped the assault of a gun-toting apron, he was some sort of hit man, or assassin or something. That thought chilled her, but it was easy enough to accept. She'd seen first hand what the Blacklight did to people, and if this were a second outbreak, she knew she needed to find somewhere safe to be. Keith seemed to have somewhere in mind. He'd known everything up until now. How to get in contact with her. How to convince her. Who was infected, though she was willing to bet that the cooks weren't. The sirens were coming closer. He wanted to avoid the EMTs, not the police. Why? "Don't you need help? Are you okay? You're bleeding!"

He made a motion to wave her worry aside before looking at his wound and sighing in irritation. Pushing aside his annoyance, he opened the door behind her. Dana looked outside. Nothing looked strange. The sirens were closer. A few types, so the police had to be on their way as well as ambulances. She turned back to Keith, who gave her a surprisingly warm and reassuring smile. "I'm fine, and I can answer all your questions. Later. We really need to get moving."

"Alright." Dana held up her hands somewhere between a shrug and surrender. "Alright. Lead the way."

- - - - -

Alex had lost count of how many people had been in the building. It was quick work to kill anyone in the hallways, but he'd taken the time to go back, apartment by apartment since the hazed glow of the infection had permeated every room he smashed open well before he'd entered. Children and elderly seemed to succumb to the virus quickly, as he'd not had to dispatch of a one, instead, he found them already dead in various apartments. Sometimes alone in a pool of blood that had poured from the orifices of their heads, other times, he met frantic parents attempting to get them out for help. Alex cut them down as they passed, feeling the rising panic in the air, accompanied by the distant howl of sirens. He couldn't destroy the building. It was still somewhat containing the virus. There were going to he no bodies for the paramedics to find which would be something they'd need to cipher out some treatment. He could maintain the virus within his own body without the danger of infecting others, though he couldn't draw it out of the air. It was also unlikely that he'd taken care of every individual in the building. Someone had to have escaped. His sweep had taken more than an hour and a half. Toward the end of that time, his victims seemed to have a less secure hold on their wits, and were already manifesting the first symptoms he'd associated. Aggression, pallor, photosensitivity, subconjunctival hemorrhaging. He couldn't contain it, but perhaps the group efforts of the biohazard crews could. He headed down to ground level, taking on the appearance of the more afflicted of his victims. He met a few more survivors and handily pummeled them, leaving the bodies for the researchers, and met the emergency personnel at the front door. Calling forth the jumbled and dissolving memories of his victims, he began his drama. "Oh God!" He called, grabbing the handles of the double glass doors and holding the door closed as the EMTs tried to enter.

"Sir, please move!" The taller of the two men said, then took in Alex's appearance with marked alarm. "Sir, open the door!"

"No way!" Alex yelled, wiping blood off his face. "This place is contagious or something! Bring the moon suits!"

"Sir, we need to help you." The man said again.

Alex noted the man's ID clipped to a breast pocket. Bart Wolgan. "I'm serious. There's nobody left to save in here. We can't let it get out."

"Sir! Step away from the door! Now!" A third man screamed. Alex turned his attention toward him. Police officer, judging by the gun he had pointed through the glass at Alex.

"No." Bart said. "Call it in. We probably do have a biohazard situation here." The officer hesitated, but then hailed the department on his radio. Bart turned back to Alex, pulling a mask over his face and leaning closer to the glass. "Sir, what's your name?"

Alex searched his memories. "Steve." He matched the name to this body. He leaned his forehead against the glass, threading his arms through the metal handles and mimicked the fatigue he'd seen others exhibit.

"What's going on?" Bart asked.

"Dunno. Something blew up on the top floor, then everybody got sick." He had to applaud his acting skills, though he really was just channeling the still fresh and individual personality of Steve.

"Sick how?" Bart asked, though Alex heard the officer in the background orchestrating some quarantine and cleanup. Good to see that his idea was starting to gain steam.

He shook his head slowly against the glass. "Dunno. They just went crazy."

"What about you?" Bart asked with no less urgency.

Alex squinted up at him, he'd almost sunk to the floor now. Only his shoulders catching in the door handles held him upright. "Head hurts. Light hurts. Hard to think." He was feigning fogginess now, preparing an exit through the trail of blood that had seeped from him and snaked back down the hall.

"Steve!" Bart called sharply. "Stay with us. Hang on. Help is coming."

"No. Not for me." Alex said, and began funneling biomass back along his escape route, leaving hardly a shell of a body for them to break as they smashed in the doors. Through his retreat, he heard the paramedic's desperate cries to rouse the shell of a body.

Alex reformed his body well down the hall. More sirens were coming. He'd done what he could, and decided that he and Dana had overstayed their welcome in Fairfield. It was time to go, but first he needed to collect his sister, and wasn't exactly sure where to do that. He made his way up to the roof and hopped to the adjacent building. The streets below were filled with flashing reds, blues and ambers in the growing darkness of evening. He'd have to leave this outbreak to the normal authorities. He doubted he'd be taking the blame for it anyway. Maybe. Highcar had gotten keys to the apartment, and by his memories, he'd mugged Luke for them, but had been looking for him specifically, and had known the apartment's location, and that Alex had been there. All arranged over limited communication with sources Highcar hadn't known personally. Right now, Alex's only lead was possibly Luke, but even he was scarce. Family vacation, if Alex remembered, though he wasn't familiar with Luke's family, and he didn't have time to deal with that right now. He needed to get Dana out of here. Chances of containment of that virus were slim, and he figured it was only a matter of time. This whole scenario seemed like an annoyingly effective plan for quick release of a second virus, though predicting the effect of Blacklight on that rabies variant seemed like a blind jab.

An orange haze in the air here drew his attention down from the roofs. He stopped, glancing back at the apartment. It was quite a few blocks back. When had he gone so far? He shook his head, focusing more on the new task at hand. The virus was out already, and concentrated here in the street below. He dropped down in the empty street beside a small diner. The doors of the restaurant were marked with crime scene tape. He slipped beneath it. The interior was empty, but he picked out the burning white traces of Blacklight contamination. It wasn't airborne. It was on the floor all around a bloody smear. He'd never been here, and he didn't contaminate merely with his presence anyway. It was something else, and Alex remembered Dana taking his sweatshirt. That article of clothing had long been assimilated into his biomass, tainted thoroughly with the virus that constituted his body now. It had been here, on the floor, as was probably the case with Dana. His stomach sank to his feet. The criml00r3t51a

e scene had already been gone over, cordoned off and abandoned. Why? The blood was still wet here. He sampled the blood, assimilating the biomass and gleaning what details from it that he could. This blood had come from a male. Relief washed over him. Relief that at least this blood wasn't Dana's. That Dana might be alive only because he didn't have proof otherwise. He clung to the hope and looked around. About a meter away, there was another bloody mess, but no bodies. "Dana!" He finally yelled, though he was fairly certain that she wouldn't be near enough to hear.

- - - - -

"I still don't understand why we can't go get Alex." Dana said while watching the small storefronts slip quickly by the windows of the old Grand Prix. "I mean, you've already got a car, right? It's just over that way."

"We don't have time." Keith said quietly, leaning forward and looking upward out the windshield. He tapped the three fingers of his left hand on the steering wheel. "No time." He mumbled again, pulling the bandage tight around his right arm again. He hadn't bled through it yet, so apparently the wound wasn't too serious.

"Where are we going?" Dana asked, folding her arms and watching the still red lights go by. He wasn't even slowing for them, yet he was still missing the strangely sparse nighttime cross traffic.

"Hamilton." He said simply, looking up again.

"Hamilton?" She echoed, leaning to see what he was searching for. There was nothing up there.

"Ontario." He leaned back and sped up even more. They were approaching the suburbs, and the already thin traffic was nonexistent now.

"Canada?!" She gasped. How were they going to manage that? Her passport had expired more than two years ago, and she didn't have it on her person anyway. "I can't go to Canada! Why Canada?"

"The infection won't go that far north." He said very calmly in the face of her beginning tirade.

"What about Alex?" She asked, forcing herself calm again. She wasn't excessively worried about his well being. How could a virus hurt a virus? Then again, she'd not really paid that close attention in microbiology. The truth of viral interactions were somewhere in the middle of a big gray field of unknown. Keith wasn't worried, but that didn't really calm her fears. Her new acquaintance seemed to be a firm believer that eggs have to crack to make an omelet, but he seemed to know what was going on. Knowing that he probably knew the answer somehow made her question feel more legitimate, so it stood. What about Alex?

"Alex will be fine. He's immune and we've already established that only your God will stop him now." Keith said, and Dana thought she heard some tone of bitterness in his voice.

She didn't miss the turn of the phrase. 'Her God.' Apparently he didn't hold himself to any religious faith. She didn't want to ask about it. Her own faith was a little questionable right now. She looked out the windshield. The houses were farther apart now, interspersed with trees bearing the first marks of color change for the year. Her mind finally resigned to the situation. She folded her arms again, slouching into the seat. Fine. If Keith wanted to take her out of the country, then let him, and he could deal with the logistics. Alex would catch up. He always did. She could almost feel the pressure of his search on her mind. He was already looking.

- - - - -

Two weeks later, Alex was still searching. He'd watched the full outbreak. The warnings from CEDA. The lies of the Green Flu. The evacuation. The airlifts for the stragglers. The shambling horde that remained. There were still a few groups of survivors fighting their way out, or digging in. Alex had consumed a few of the infected for better cover. Most of the infected didn't have the good sense to avoid him, even after he'd dispatched countless dozens of them. He found it easier to blend and appear as one of them, because when one took a notion to attack, his cries usually brought countless others, and, frankly, he was getting tired of killing them. He'd searched town. Body dumps. Wreckage of skirmishes. There was never a sign of Dana, either in death or in passing. Every helicopter that had come, Alex had scaled the building, and never saw Dana among those fleeing. She hadn't attempted to contact him if she had escaped, not that there were many avenues for communication. The infected took out just about anything that made noise, which had quickly eliminated phones, computers and televisions all over town. Alex didn't know whether to give her up for dead or to assume that she had escaped. He couldn't begin to guess where she might've escaped to, especially not knowing the friend she'd met that day. The diner had yielded no clues, and authorities never returned to investigate further. The virus had overtaken them.

Alex still couldn't drum any guilt up for this infection. As with the last, the man responsible had died, leaving the resulting viruses released to do what they would. Alex thought Blacklight might be the lesser of those two viruses. At least it had the potential to guide its development and evolution with a conscious thought process. The Green Flu had just been mutating along the normal viral paths, at least judging by the infected he'd been consuming over the week. It would do a lot of damage to the humans, but they were resourceful, and would very likely survive. More likely that it would be a very small portion of the population that would survive, but survival of the few was survival of the species.

Turning from Dana, she had to be alive and was fine, and would surely find him as soon as she was able, Alex turned his attention elsewhere. Gentek. It was obvious that their influence and providers had been well removed from the company. Alex had only to trace the trails of information.

But there was a new layer to this now. An outside force somehow connecting Gentek and Blackwatch beyond the realm of the infection. And where had this original virus come from? Highcar had genuinely been delivering samples to find a cure, or so he wholeheartedly believed. Was it a legitimate need from whoever had hired him, or were they using him as well as Alex? He shook his head, unsure. There was precious little information to go on, but he knew that the last message Highcar had received had first hit the towers in Denver, Colorado. He headed west. It was a good place to start.

- - - - -

a/n For what happened before this, see the game Prototype. For what happened after this, see the games Left 4 Dead 1 and 2. For a little side story dealing with the infected before it's all cleaned up, see No Cure So Treat With A Bullet. For the wtf of Altaïr being in 2009 New York and Pennsylvania, see Feathers (as mentioned in the opening note). Hooray external references! And Woo! This is my theory for what caused the L4D outbreak.

Also, when Altaïr says 'you're coming with me.', how do you really counter that statement? (without getting stabbed in the head)

Further, yes. He dodges bullets. Mostly. Lots of practice.


End file.
